NOWELE. North-Western European Language Evolution - Volume 70, Issue 1, 2017

The transmitted in line 811b of the Old English poem Elene by Cynewulf has been generally regarded as representing an otherwise unattested adjective mānweorc composite of mān ‘crime’ and weorc ‘work’. Since weorc is unparalleled and unexpected as a second element in an adjectival compound, an alternative explanation of the manuscript reading is proposed here, scribal alteration of an adjective otherwise attested only in the First Cleopatra Glossary, occurring there in the written form . While this adjective is listed under various headword forms in dictionaries, it is probably to be described as mānwrǣce (Anglian mānwrēce), having the same second element as another adjective in which Old English -wrǣce has often been misunderstood, godwrǣce ‘impious’. The origin of -wrǣce is a Germanic verbal adjective in -i-/-ja- derived from the etymon of Old English wrecan ‘drive’; the original meaning of mānwrǣce may thus have been ‘perpetrating crime’. , corresponding to the Anglian form that Cynewulf would have used in Elene 811b, would have been susceptible to alteration to by a copyist unfamiliar with the word, as comparable instances of scribal transposition of elements suggest.

The article examines the use of the color brown in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, which is encoded by brúnn and jarpr. More specifically, it seeks to determine through linguistic categorization the objects about which brown is used and to determine on the basis of its frequency whether for Old Norse-Icelandic brown should be placed in the earlier stages of the evolution of color terms or if it should be assigned to the later stages. The data show that brúnn is the more frequently used term, though the earliest texts suggest that both brúnn and jarpr were contextually restricted. Gradually, brúnn came to be applied to a wider range of objects, whereas jarpr remained a secondary color term. As a basic color term, brúnn should be assigned a fairly late stage in the temporal-evolutionary order of basic color terms.

Borgarmålet ‘language of the townspeople’ was a trade idiom used by the Swedish townspeople and the Sámi during periods of seasonal trade in Swedish Lule Lappmark at the beginning of the 18th century. The analysis of the five sentences in this trade language provided by P. Högström (in a book published in 1747 ) allows us to suggest that Borgarmålet was a typical pidgin characterized by a vocabulary derived mostly from the superstrate language (Swedish), by a stable simplified grammatical structure without synthetic forms and by direct or transformed grammatical interference from the substrate language (Sámi). Borgarmålet was also characterised by innovations of its own in word-formation as well as in grammar, a feature typical of pidgins. A special feature to differentiate Borgarmålet from other pidgins is a transfer of aspectuality – expressed in Sámi by different suffixes but in Borgarmålet with the help of lexical means from Swedish.

Building on Callender 2012 , this paper argues that residue from the High German tenues shift may be the result of incomplete lexical diffusion (as opposed to later northern borrowing). Although unshifted forms rarely appear in OHG texts (see Braune 2004 [1886] ), an examination of the TITUS corpus and Schützeichel 1995 revealed that their shifted counterparts were also largely absent. This suggests that these forms were simply not the types of words written in OHG texts. Incomplete lexical diffusion thus remains a plausible explanation. I also argue that affrication and spirantization may have been phonologically (perceptually) abrupt. Furthermore, there was little distinction between the two post-vocalically for old short stops, a position where affricates do not survive today.

Der Artikel behandelt die sog. “Eifler Regel”, eine satzphonetische Erscheinung in westdeutschen Dialekten und im Luxemburgischen. Ein wortauslautendes -n wird unter bestimmten Bedingungen getilgt oder bleibt erhalten. Die Bedingungen, welche phonetischer, grammatischer und lexikalischer Natur sind, werden zum ersten Mal in ihrer vollen Komplexität beschrieben. Die Beispiele entstammen zum größten Teil dem Dialekt der Stadt Trier. Es wird aber auch auf einige geographisch bedingte Abweichungen eingegangen. Zum Schluß wird die Erscheinung in einen typologischen Zusammenhang im weiteren deutschsprachigen und germanischen Rahmen gestellt.